


Five of Wands

by Sunsinourhands



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, General, Hisoka doesn't actually have friends, relationships are weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-06
Updated: 2015-12-06
Packaged: 2018-05-05 05:18:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5362829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunsinourhands/pseuds/Sunsinourhands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hisoka asks out a 'childhood friend' for drinks, just to irritate someone else.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five of Wands

            Hisoka rolled his glass with practiced motions of his hand, watching the ice ball mingling with the amber liquor inside. Hair down and bare-faced, he still stuck out. Pale. Tall. Bright red hair and sharp yellow eyes. A tailored suit in smoky charcoal grey, and a blood-red tie secured with a black tie pin shaped like the spades suit. His nails matched the tie—tidy, shiny, and perfect. And although this was Sahelta State and not even the right country for Heaven’s Arena, Hisoka’s reputation was pervasive enough online that he could have been recognized by someone who saw a picture. Maybe. Just maybe, some eagle-eyed Heavens Arena fan had already snapped a photo of him waiting outside the basement bar. At least, that’s what Hisoka hoped.

            The woman sitting opposite Hisoka in the private booth wasn’t hoping for that. Hisoka saw the tension in her neck and jaw, but pretended that he didn’t. Her hair was dark, cut in a sharp angled bob. The longest of those strands framed her face, a little before the chin on either side. Honestly the doorman might not have let the petite woman into the bar if Hisoka hadn’t waited outside for her. Although she was certainly very attractive, she didn’t have the posture of someone rich or powerful.

            Given that, the terrace was right out. So the basement bar it was.

            Also, this time Hisoka tried his very best to imitate a polite, normal person.

            “You changed your hair, Skuld. It suits you,” Hisoka smiled.

            “You haven’t,” Skuld answered. Ah. Her voice was lower than Hisoka remembered, too.

            “How can you say that? I’ve changed my cut and color. You could have noticed that, at least,” Hisoka laughed.

            Skuld’s dark eyes peered at the magician over her own glass.

            “Of course you’re right. But, you could at least humor me, and my vanity,” Hisoka’s grin widened.

            “I know you don’t follow the Arena circuit. But, I hear you’ve been busy. If you’re not careful, you’ll become famous. Nen Exorcists are hard to come by. Nen ‘enchanted’ objects even more so,” the magician added.

            “Hisoka,” Skuld began, turning her dark eyes upwards to Hisoka’s face. Hisoka smiled to the very corners of his mouth. And he smiled with his eyes, too.

            “Why did you ask me to come here?” she asked.

            “Can’t I just want to catch up with a childhood friend? It’s been years since we talked face to face,” Hisoka asked, putting his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands.

            “Is that what we are?”

            “Well, I don't want to fight you, and we probably understand each other the best. Come to think of it, you’re the only living person who’s known me as long as you have. Isn’t that what a friend is?” Hisoka’s smile spread to the corners of his face again.

            “Liar,” Skuld’s words were soft, almost a whisper into her glass. Hisoka laughed.

            “What else would you call us? Two monsters that would come to mutually assured destruction if we were enemies? Friends is better. After all, I don’t know if I’ve ever met someone who was less human than me, before. Normally I’d rate someone like you in the single-digits. But—” Hisoka picked up his glass and brought it to his lips, letting the sentence hang unfinished. Minutes of silence spread out between them, broken up by the sound of Hisoka’s ice hitting his glass or cracking as it melted.

            What neither of them said was that Hisoka had been there. He’d seen it. He knew. Back then, young Hisoka had stuck around the woods to watch Skuld as she died. But, instead he saw Things come up from the ground and sew Skuld’s body back together from the inside out. Then they poured that bright, luminous green _something_ into her mouth until it filled her stomach and her lungs and overflowed from her lips and then she came back. Newly reborn from a baptismal submersion in Nen and something even more otherworldly, little Skuld lived. Well, she was more like a ghost who walked, then.

            Hisoka had never seen that happen before, and never saw it again. As others gradually died, little Skuld became more and more alive as the years passed.

            It was new.

            It was interesting.

            “What they fed you back then. What did it taste like?” Hisoka asked as he inclined his head at an angle, breaking the silence.

            Skuld paused, turning her head to stare at the booth wall from under her dark lashes.

            “It was sweet. And it burned. Like walking into a hot building after being out in the cold for too long,” she said.

            After a while, Hisoka was the one to break the silence. Again.

            “The biggest difference between you and me—” Hisoka began. He drew out the thought with a light tone.

            “—is that you’re obsessed with your lack of humanity. It paralyzes you with the fear of hurting anything and everything you come across. It makes you fear fun. It makes you fear life. And the fun I have playing with my toys makes me more human than you. Isn’t that funny?” Hisoka said.

            Skuld blew a sigh out of her nose. Little more than a noise.

            “You know, you should just accept it. Find something you _like_ ,” Hisoka’s face turned lewd in that moment. His smile was a little too large. Teeth a little too white and perfect.

            “You prefer men, right? Just ask and I’ll find you someone nice and interesting,” Hisoka said.

            If only she could physically frown more than she was in that moment, Skuld thought, she would. Now he was just screwing around. Probably, they were being watched by one of Hisoka’s other ‘friends’. Someone he wanted to break normal character with. He wanted to be more mysterious than the usual fabrication.

            It was the only reason for Hisoka to use whatever resources and connections he had to hunt down her new number.

            Another lull.

            “I checked by your childhood home the other day. The curse is still intact,” Hisoka said, pleased despite the sprinkle of silences.

            “Good. Thank you,” Skuld said.

            “That’s one strong Nen curse, you know. I’m still impressed,” Hisoka tipped back his glass and emptied it.

            “You know it wasn’t me,” Skuld said.

            “I know. It was the other six,” Hisoka said, playing with the glass in front of him and watching Skuld out of the corner of his eyes.

            “When you finally put them to rest, what are you going to do? The friends that brought you back won’t let you go when you’ve accomplished that. If you don’t learn to live a little before then, you’ll end up like that kid I told you about. Or even worse.”

            “Fair enough,” she said.

            Hisoka’s grin widened again. Oh little Skuld. She wasn’t like Hisoka’s other toys. She was too easy to break, and then the fun would be over before it even started. So the magician had a strict policy of making sure he kept her on a high display shelf so that no one clumsy would break his doll by accident. Most of his other toys played too rough for a collector’s item like Skuld Betony.

            That was why he warned her about what would happen in Yorkshin the previous year. Sometimes the Things could piece her back together. But, Hisoka feared that one day they wouldn’t be able to. Then the magician would lose his hardest toy to replace.

            Skuld nursed her single drink, and then left an hour later to catch the subway. Hisoka waited until his other ‘friend’ stopped shadowing him and left, too. Long after Skuld had left, Hisoka downed his sixth drink. He reaffirmed his usual plan. Better to exercise restraint and only look at his delicate toy once in a while. That way the fun would last longer.

 

            And it would irritate his needle-using ‘friend’ to no end that someone like Hisoka had a ‘childhood friend’ like Skuld.

 

            Hisoka called for another glass. He was in a good mood.


End file.
